


Shaming the Devil

by raja815



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Academy!fic, Angst, M/M, Pre-Series, whorehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raja815/pseuds/raja815
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Maes almost half an hour of walking to find the little bar, and now he's here, he realizes Roy is definitely not pleased to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shaming the Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colonel_bastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colonel_bastard/gifts).



> Part of a fic exchange with Colonel. Be sure to read her incredible fic, [Cold](http://colonel-bastard.livejournal.com/7504.html). We swapped our OTPs and gave ourselves the prompts of "Snow," and "Ruby." Set pre-series, academy!fic.

It takes Maes almost half an hour of walking to find the little bar, nestled in a cul-de-sac on the other side of town. He finds himself lost more than once before he sees the glow of light through the cloudy, tinted windows, sees the sign and the brass address numbers beside the entryway and breathes a sigh of relief. It has begun to snow since he started out—wet, runny snow that falls in thick, slushy chunks from the hastily darkening sky—and since he wears no hat nor scarf nor proper boots, he is soaked through from both the shoulders up and the knees down.

He walks through the door, stamping off the slush, into a cramped and noisy sea of warmth and bodies that makes his glasses suddenly opaque with fog. Girlish laughter mixes with male voices and the jangles of a honky-tonk pianist, and the moist, warm air is thick with the smells of beer and sweat and cheap perfume. He stands in the doorway, half-dazzled, dripping all over the polished wooden floor, scrubbing his glasses on his sleeve to clear them, until the rustle of a dress catches his ear. He puts his glasses back on and a pair of heavily made up eyes swim into focus before him. It’s a middle-aged woman, dressed all in spangled crimson, with dyed ruby-red sausage curls splayed about her face. 

“How can I help you, little man?” She asks, hand resting on a bustle of red chiffon at one broad hip, grinning in a decidedly lecherous way through her painted lips. Startled, Maes' breath catches and he takes a half-step back. “Here to have a little fun?”

“Well... actually,” he says, struggling to keep the shock from his face, for he suddenly knows exactly what kind of place this is, and it is nothing like what he expected, “I was looking for Roy. He here?”

The woman is taken aback, but covers it well. Maes, always adept at reading people, is duly impressed.

“Sure thing, sweetie,” she says, putting a hand bedecked with long red nails that match her lips and her dress and her hair onto Maes’ soaked shoulder. “You a friend of his?”

“I’m his roommate,” Maes supplies, as the woman leads him into the crowded room, passing scattered groups of men laughing with other gaudily (and scantily) dressed girls, approaching a polished bar against the far wall. 

She grins again, that hint of lechery back, shaking her shockingly red hair out of her face. “That so? Well, hope you’re keeping an eye on him. Our Roy can be a feisty one. There you go, sweetie.”

She points, the light catching on one of her fierce nails, to the bar, where two figures stand. One is a woman, heavyset and dressed as elaborately as the woman who lead him in, but Maes can read a hint of familiarity in some of the angles of her face, as well as her dark, shiny hair.

Beside her, drawing a beer from the tap while staring at a thick book open on the bar beside him, is who Maes came to see.

“Yo, Roy!” He says before he can think it though, and plows through a few scattered groups of men drinking beer and flirting with girls, hand above his head in a hearty wave.

He slows a moment when he sees Roy’s face. His hand and grin falter a little.

Roy is definitely not pleased to see him.

“Someone here to see you, Roy-boy?” The woman asks, smiling toward Maes and putting down a bottle of whiskey to clap Roy’s shoulder. “Careful of the head on that, kid, you’ll make it go flat.” She scolds, her gaze shifting to the now overflowing glass of beer in Roy’s hands. Roy sets it down at once.

“Hi,” Maes says, reaching the bar and hiding his suddenly nervous hands beneath it. He wonders what he was thinking, coming here. It seems pretty obvious now that Roy has never shared his address not just because the subject never came up.

“Hello,” Roy says, and looks to the woman beside him. “This is Maes Hughes.” He offers nothing else to either of them. She seems undeterred, and reaches across the bar for Maes’ hand.

“Nice to meet you.” She offers Maes a surprisingly warm smile—whoever she is, she seems not to share Roy’s indignation at Maes’ visit—and turns back to Roy. “Take a break, Roy, go see your friend. You’ve been back here long enough anyway; all the boys coming in now aren’t looking for _you_ to pour them drinks.”

“All right,” he says, taking up the book beside him and sliding out through the opening behind the bar. “Come on.”

“Take him upstairs if you boys want to talk,” the woman adds, wiping the overflowing glass and sliding it across the bar into the waiting hands of a thirsty patron. “Warmer up there. Quieter, too.”

“All right,” Roy says again, and takes off for the gilded staircase in the opposite corner of the room, without turning to make sure Maes follows him. He takes him up one flight, mumbles rather sharply, “no! Not here, one more,” when Maes tries to turn off the staircase at the top of the landing into a hallway of red carpet and closed doors, and leads him up a second plainer flight that spills them into a tiny darkened hallway.

“So,” Maes says, because the empty, awkward sound of their footsteps echoing is starting to make him feel rather sick. “This is where you live, huh?”

“How the hell did you get this address?” Roy hisses. The venom behind the words stuns Maes a little; Roy can be temperamental, Maes has seen _that_ first hand, but he can’t remember ever being on the receiving end.

“I was in the record room; I found it in your file.” It had seemed quite clever at the time; it sounds pretty beastly when he says it aloud in the here and now, and Maes feels ashamed of himself. “I missed you; thought it’d be fun to surprise you.”

“We only have weekend leave. You were going to see me again on Sunday night.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“If you wanted to see me, you could’ve asked before I left. I would’ve met you somewhere.”

“Where’s the surprise in that?” Maes laughs heartily, hoping to break the tension and make Roy smile. Neither happens. Roy keeps glaring at him, his deep grey eyes luminous with his fury.

“You’ve seen me,” he says, settling the heavy book beneath his arm. “Now you can go. Why aren’t you home, anyway, you’re always bragging about how the girls back home can't keep their eyes off you.”

“You think I was gonna take the train that far North for two-day leave? Not a chance. Come on. Let’s go get a drink somewhere else if you don’t want me here.”

“I don’t want a drink.” Roy turns, heading for a doorway at the end of the little hall. “You can find your way down, I’ll—”

Desperate, Maes’ mouth pulls words from nowhere.

“You know, if you think I care about where you come from, I don’t.”

Roy stills mid-step. 

“Of course you care," he hisses through his clenched teeth. "Everyone cares. You should’ve seen the Captain’s face, the first time he saw me on the parade grounds. He’s been coming here for fifteen years.”

The idea of stern Captain Chesterfield living it up in this place almost makes Maes laugh aloud, but he stifles it at the last moment.

“The woman who let you in used to give me baths when I was a kid,” Roy continues, gathering strength. “I saw how you looked at her. Going to start looking at me the same way? A real laugh, isn’t it, an army officer from the most notorious whorehouse in East City. Bet you think I'm just like them, that we'll all just lie down and take it to get ahead. I'm ten times better than anyone else at that academy, and if you think that just because I was—”

“Oh, shut up, Roy,” Maes says, both angry at Roy's lack of faith and afraid to let the tirade continue, lest Roy go too far and permanent damage be done. He takes his friend’s shoulder to pull him in. “Don’t be an idiot.” He holds tight as Roy attempts to shake him free, and pulls back to look into Roy's eyes. Roy tries to turn his head, but Maes takes his chin, forcing his gaze.

For a long moment they stare, the air thrumming red with tension all around them. Roy's eyes are as harsh and dark as the storm outside. 

"Don't be an idiot," Maes repeats. "I don't care."

He leans forward, just enough to brush a soft kiss against his roommate's mouth. " For fuck's sake, Mustang. Do you really think so little of me? You _know_ I don't care."

And when he pulls back, the acid is gone from Roy's gaze.

“You’re soaking wet,” Roy mumbles, darting away to hide a sudden, intense emotion. His voice is thick, but no longer with anger. Maes' mouth flares in a relieved smile.

“I know. It’s snowing out.”

“Here, I'll just get...” Roy pulls away and disappears into one of the doorways. He's gone just long enough for Maes to wonder if he should go after him, before he reemerges bearing a fluffy red towel. He reaches up and lets it fall over Maes’s head, rubbing at his hair.

“Can I take off my coat?” Maes chances, and peers under the edge of the towel just in time to catch Roy in a nod.

“Come on over here.” Roy guides him with a hand to the shoulder, just as the woman downstairs had, and they enter the room he’d been aiming for. It turns out to be a tiny garret, its ownsership identifiable by the crowded bookcases and the few labeled vials of alchemic materials, its one window over the single bed almost obscured with the snow outside. Maes tosses aside the towel, his coat, and his wet boots and goes to sit beside Roy on the bed.

“You know, I was only looking at her because of her hair,” Maes chances, and is relieved to see the corner of Roy’s mouth twitch.

“She calls herself Ruby around the men who come in, so she only wears it red. We’ve been telling her she’s getting to old for the hair dye, but she won’t give it up.”

“She used to give you baths?”

“All the time.”

“I think I’m jealous.”

Roy smiles all the way, and lies down. Maes flops beside him and takes his hand to play with his fingers.

“The woman at the bar,” he says, not quite asking.

“She owns this place.”

“She looks like you," he prompts.

There is another brief, hesitant pause. Roy appears to steel himself, then looks to Maes, meeting his gaze.

“My aunt. She raised me.”

“She did a good job.”

“Don’t be maudlin, Maes; I hate it.”

“I know you do.” Maes smiles. He turns, curls his arms tight around Roy's waist, the way they do when they spend the night together hidden beneath Roy's blanket in the Academy bunks. He kisses him again, longer this time, and takes a breath rich in the smell of Roy's skin. Roy’s hand slides up, cradling itself above Maes' hip. 

“Thank you,” Roy says, the words coming in an abrupt puff of air against Maes’ lips. It startles him, but he knows what Roy means by it, and he responds with the sweetest kiss yet.

"No problem." He mutters, and then, with a hint of joke, "my pleasure."

"If you say so," Roy responds, and they both laugh as their mouths draw together again.

The bed is an even tighter fit than the bunks in their dorm room, the room drafty and dark as the storm outside picks up, the air heavy with the ingrained smell of beer and the sounds of screaming laughter and piano that drift in from the bar, even through all the levels of flooring between them. And all those things just make it better.


End file.
